Zelsys stood there in stunned silence, having expected a shotgun blast of miniature lightning-beads.

“You uh, do anything with the striker?” she asked with a nervous laugh.

“Whuh?” Sarz blinked a few times, dumbfounded.

Taking a deep breath, Zel began burning off one-third increments of her lung capacity and firing off one miniature lightning bolt after another into the rock, explaining, “See this? This used to be a lightning shotgun. I would just dump a bunch of Fulgur into the striker’s sparks, so you clearly did something with it to change the outcome of my brutishly simple technique.”

“Well uh, between the new striker…” Sarz began counting out on his fingers. “And the new ignition rune… And the in-barrel part of the kinetic recycler… It stands to reason that improved focus such as what you’re seeing would result from our refurbishing.”

“Whatever the reason is, it’s no cause for complaint,” remarked the satisfied customer, reaching for the gaunt-cannon’s bolt handle. Ka-clack. Ka-clack. A forceful expulsion of Fog, errant sparks fluttering about in the swiftly-dissipating cloud.

The shell popped out the back just the same as it had always done, but not being particularly eager to grab hot brass with her bare hands and having stored away her ammo belt besides, she closed the bolt back up.

Upon the group’s return to the G-Kaiser smithy, Zel took a few moments to pull her ammo belt out of storage and strapped it to her waist for the first time, having opted to use the Lightning Butcher’s holster as an anchor point beforehand due to the precarious trustworthiness of her old trousers’s belt.

Zelsys made absolutely certain to give proper thanks to the three Three Smiths once again before she left, promising that she would make good use of their hard work.

She was well aware that the sleeve on her arm was as much an art piece as it was an instrument of violence, and she would make damn sure it lived up to its potential.

“Why’re you doing this here again? You won’t be able to properly test the suit even if it works,” Zef questioned, lazily leaning back in her chair, fiddling with the fotoapparat’s focus knob with her right hand whilst flipping a copper in her left.

With a mix of frustration and pain in his voice, Makhus snapped back at her, “Because I don’t have all my kit at the sect, brain champion. Iron Rider, Ribcage On! Iron Rider, R-Arm On!”

“Y’know, you won’t have enough time to call out every individual piece in a real fight,” the gunwoman prodded again as Fog whirled about Makhus’s right arm and chest. A few moments later it was gone, revealing a barebones exoskeleton around his chest, connected to a mish-mashed armor sleeve around his right arm. Several smaller plates around the elbow had been removed, replaced by a glyph-glass phial slot with a valve, tubes visibly snaking out from it and disappearing beneath the sleeve’s larger plates.

“And I’ve already told you the whole suit can come out at once, I just need all the tracking glyphs to do that,” he rebuked, slotting a glass phial into the modified armor.

”Loading test batch number eight...”

“Injecting!”

The turn of a valve. The sting of four needles.

Liquid fire flooded his arm, spreading out into the rest of his body. Muscles grew tense and heated, biological safeties were forcefully shut off, his body and right arm specifically were alchemically primed for a feat far beyond their normal limits.

A grin crept onto the alchemist’s face, partly due to the spirit-rousing effects of what he’d just injected, and partly due to genuine exhilaration over just this partial success.

Exhilaration was undercut by trepidation however, sword hand hovering over his blade’s handle while his other had gripped its scabbard.

If his math had been off, if he himself had changed too much since he’d tested himself and done the aforementioned math, or even if the serum happened to be a little off due to unforeseen inconsistencies in the components… There was no way to know whether his arm would survive this.

Sure, the Iron Rider exoskeleton was close to the best possible safety device for this experiment he could imagine, but that didn’t make the prospect of his sword arm pulling itself apart any more appealing.

A breath sucked in between the teeth.

The tranquil warmth of Fog softened the fire in his blood as he purged his mind.

Perfect void of the mind.

No more thoughts.

Only the leather-wrapped grip in his palm and the dummy before him.

“Sensory Enhancement.”

Pupils dilating.

He gave the command.

“Fire!”

Zefaris raised her gun and fired a full-power shot in his direction.

Not at him, but a target to his right up against the wall, so that the bullet would pass immediately between him and the dummy.

Old skills wouldn’t help him here. The solution and its effects upon the body would be wasted with technique that didn’t take them into account.

This one would be his, and his alone.

Despite the tedium of scientific experimentation, Zefaris paid the closest of attention with every attempt. She could see the progress in his failures, the alchemist’s discerning judgment always able to find the flaw with his own methodology, and his neurotic drive towards some ephemeral ideal of a unique skill set always pushing him to measures others would not consider.

She found it endlessly amusing, how he repeatedly derided himself as a self-taught fraud whilst repeatedly surpassing the achievements of his supposed betters.

With her arcane eyes, Zefaris could see her own bullet flying through the air if she honed her attention in on it.

What she could not discern, however, was the blade that split her bullet and the dummy behind it in half.

It was just a sudden flash of steel, more discernible by the seemingly instant motion of its wielder than itself…

...And by the terrible noise of steel giving way under irreconcilable strain that followed soon after. By his posture, it looked to have been an upward unsheathing slash.